Meaning & History

Means "troubled lady", from Old Irish bé "woman" and a second element, perhaps chuma, meaning "grief, sorrow, wound". In Irish legend she was a woman who "dwelt in the Land of Promise and had an affair with Gaiar, a son of Manannán mac Lir, the sea-god. Because of this she was banished to the human world where she persuaded Conn of the Hundred Battles, the High King, to take her as his wife or concubine. She grew jealous of his son Art and tried to get him banished" (Peter Berresford Ellis, 1987).